There is a continuous attraction, beginning with God, going to the world, and ending at last with God, an attraction which returns to the same place where it began as though in a kind of circle. -Marsilio Ficino

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Preach, Father, Preach!

I suppose it is hard for converts to the Catholic Church to accept how the theology and method of the church has changed so much in the 20th century. Usually converts read only the books on a particular faith that they wish to read, and they develop in their mind some Platonic ideal of the way the faith they're converting to is supposed to be. But then they get discourgaged and disillusioned when, after converting, they see it's not really the way they envisioned it in their minds. For example, if one limits himself to only reading books by Ignatius Press, watching EWTN, going to an Indult Mass (or some more tradtional Novus Ordo mass), he may very well have an unpleasant surprise when he sees how the church actually is in all of its breadth and diversity. Incidently, people do this when converting to any number of faith traditions. It happens with Anglicanism too, so I am not just picking on Roman's here. Zealous converts to another faith tradition, would do well to seek out the wackiest stuff that people of that tradition have to offer, and tofamilairize themselves with it, so they will not surprised by anything coming down the pike.Great post, Father. I would only add that to pretend to have the theology of fifty years ago in today's Church is to just as much living in a Potempkin village as converting to ultra-traditional Greek Orthodoxy and getting baptized again on Mount Athos. It's an escape, and that's all.

Now you are just being absurd. A schismatic is a schismatic, as Roman Catholic theology traditionally says. You can´t have your cake and eat it too, Penny. Go back and read the documents of Vatican II and then see if you can be so ultramontanist.

Ah, every two or three posts someone is nice enough to stop by and say they are part of "The Church" but someone else is not. The Orthodox (and the RCs) forget that they both gave each other mutual excommunications as thoughtful parting gifts (as did Pius V to Elizabeth I) and that some Orthodox "re-baptized" the Romans just a few decades ago (perhaps, in parts of the world, they still do). Yes, they took those mutual excommunications back almost a millennium later, but people in America quickly forget history. In Eastern Europe the Pope is still considered by a large chunk of the Orthodox clergy and laity to be "anti-Christ."

By Rome's standard, Penny (if she is EO) is not part of the One, True Church. The Pope, from the vantage point of many ultra traditional Orthodox, is still the anti-Christ, with prayers offered up that he would stay off their soil (remember JPII's trips to Greece and the Ukraine?). Reality is a tricky thing.

Ah, and the documents of Vatican II? Best to ignore those, and the later admonitions that Roman Catholics treat Anglicans with respect and acknowledge our common heritage in the Scriptures and the traditions of the Church Fathers. The converts to Rome ignore all of this and pick up their copies of the decisions handed down at Trent.

I am NOT Eastern Orthodox but a true faithful daughter of Rome!! Rome and Constantinople never excommunicated each other! The excommunications were of individuals, the Roman legate(cant remember his name right now) excommunicated the Patriarch and the Patriarch excommunicated the legate. There was never any excommunications of entire churches!! Get your history straight! My claim was that the Orthodox at least have a claim of Apostolic Succession a claim the anglicans make but can hardly expect to be accepted by anyone! What a joke!!

Thus does Cardinal Humbert himself portray the deed. In the bull of excommunication, it was said incidentally: "As for the pillars of the Empire and the honorable, wise citizens, the city (that is, Constantinople) is most Christian and Orthodox. But as for Michael, who is unlawfully called patriarch, and the champions of his stupidity, innumerable weeds of heresies are scattered in it... Let them be anathema, let them be anathema ­ maranatha (I Corinthians 16:22). Amen." After this, and in the presence of the emperor and his grandees, they orally pronounced: "whoever obstinately begins to oppose the faith of the holy Roman and apostolic throne and its sacrificial offering, let him be anathema, let him be anathema ­ maranatha (that is, let him be excommunicated and let him perish at the coming of the Lord) and let him not be considered a Catholic Christian, but a heretical Prozymite (that is, those who do not accept unleavened bread and prefer leavened bread). So be it, so be it, so be it."

The insolence of the papal legates stirred up the whole population of the capital against them; only thanks to the emperor, who esteemed their position as emissaries, were they able to freely depart.

As to Anglican Orders being invalid, what a wonderful piece of fiction that was. Holding the Anglican Ordinal to 12th century standards would have invalidated every ordination in Christendom prior to that time.

Nobody who reads the Preface to the Anglican ordinal or the content of rites (form, words) for administering the Sacrament for any of the three orders can justly deny that it intends "to do what the Church does". However, the Roman Committee of 1896 had to find a plausible fault to condemn Anglican orders and hit on the form (with confusion as to intention) and condemned as invalid the words used because after "Receive the Holy Ghost..." they failed to specify (for Priestly ordination) the current Roman interpretation of Priesthood, viz, "to offer sacrifice to God and celebrate Masses for the quick and the dead...") for brevity I skim over the full quotation. Further similar objections centre on the necessity set down by the Council of Trent for undeviating adherence to its definitions of Transubstantiation and the Mass as a propitiatory Sacrifice as in the 1546 Profession of Faith: while the addition of words after the ordinal of the 1549 Prayer Book specifying the Order being conferred on the subject was incorrectly interpreted as admitting a fault of intention. (In fact the revisers specified that the addition was in the face of Presbyterians who denied any difference between the Orders of Bishop and Priest.) In reply to Apostolicae Curae the (non-infallible) Archbishops of Canterbury and York signed as Response the exquisite Latin document prepared by Bishop John Wordsworth of Salisbury, pointing out the incredible error of the Bull in that by specifying the need for inclusion of the contemporary form of Rome it negated the Orders of ALL in the Apostolic Ministry who had EVER been ordained or Consecrated. Those words were added much later and not as part of the actual bestowal of Ordination Grace but in the "porrectio instrumentorum" - the handing over of the symbols (chalice and paten) for the Eucharist. A regrettable rejoinder from Rome took up the attack and insisted that no man could be Priest who did not accept the Trent definition of Transubstantiation: to which the Archbishops of York and Canterbury wrote, "It is, for us, simply impossible to believe it to be the will of our Lord that admission to the ministry of the Church should depend upon the acceptance of a metaphysical definition in terms of Medieval philosophy, of the mysterious gift bestowed in the Holy Eucharist, above all when we remember that such a definition was unknown in the Church in the early ages of its history, and only publicly affirmed by the Church of Rome in the thirteenth century."

In short, Rome's response was "infallible" only as poor theology and history.

The post beginning "Thus Cardinal Humbert himself" was taken from a history written by Father Victor Potapov of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Washington D.C. (not the ramblings of an Anglican cleric; I've relied on those involved--those excommunicated--to tell the story). Again, it is simply history.

As to the post on Anglican Orders, it was from "The Messenger" of the Traditional Anglican Communion (a very pro-Roman Catholic body of Anglicans). Simply history. . .as clear as can be. If Anglican Orders are invalid, than so were all of the Orders conferred before the 12th century

(". . .the incredible error of the Bull in that by specifying the need for inclusion of the contemporary form of Rome it negated the Orders of ALL in the Apostolic Ministry who had EVER been ordained or Consecrated. Those words were added much later and not as part of the actual bestowal of Ordination Grace. . .")

I'm just saying the pope was demonstrably not infallible in this matter, not that he (or the present holder of the office) isn't Christian.

Arturo, please feel free to delete my posts as you see fit if you deem them not in an irenic spirit. I only become defensive when I can clearly tell someone else has not presented the facts in an accurate manner.